WHAT? 2nd Eisa Drum Festival

WHEN? Saturday, May 12, 2012

TIME? 5:30 pm to 9:00 pm

WHERE? Great Lawn, Kapiolani Community College

Kapiolani Community College and the Office of Student Activities are pleased to announce that the 2nd Eisa Drum Festival will be held on Saturday, May 12, 2012 on the Great Lawn at the center of our campus.

Program will begin at 5:30 pm and conclude with a grand finale at 9 pm. Food sales will begin at 5 pm. The event is FREE and open to the public.

WHAT IS EISA? Eisa is a form of dance and drumming unique to Okinawa. The Eisa Drum Festival seeks to celebrate and develop an appreciation for this little known form of drumming in Hawaii. There will be a spectrum of Eisa, ranging from traditional dances to contemporary styles.

WHY IS THIS FESTIVAL SPECIAL? The festival will feature the largest gathering of Eisa drummers in Hawaii, all uniting for a spectacular grand finale. We hope to have over 100 performers all drumming together. There will be a gathering of the Shisa (Okinawan Lion Dogs).

There will also be a special guest performer. The acclaimed artist, choreographer, director, and one of my favorite performers Daiichi Hirata is traveling all the way from Okinawa to participate in Eisa Festival!

Performers include: Chinagu Eisa Hawaii, Hawaii Eisa Shinyuu Kai, Ryukyukoku Matsuri Daiko, and the Young Okinawans of Hawaii with Paranku Clubs of Hawaii, Taiko Center of the Pacific, Urizun Minyo Group, and Kawika Napoleon.

Enjoy live music under the stars. Bring lawn chairs to sit on, blankets, and jackets. Parking is free. Alcohol is strictly prohibited. Parking Map of campus.

FOOD! The majority of the food on sale will be prepared by Chef Grant Sato and Chef Dave Hamada of KCC’s culinary program. Special desserts provided by the KCC Slow Food Club. There will be rafute, kabocha, miso eggplant, special bento, yakisoba, andagi and more! Check out the Okinawan sweet potato bread pudding and “Goya Popper.” Full list of items for sale and descriptions will be posted shortly at www.facebook.com/eisahawaii

Up-to-date information on program, schedule, parking, maps, and food items on sale will be posted at www.facebook.com/eisahawaii

The 1st Eisa Drum Festival was a truly magical event. We were blessed with amazing performances and an incredible crowd. To see videos and photos from the 1st festival, please visit: www.pigsfromthesea.com

(h/t Shari)

Here’s a new Okinawa hip-hop, rather Ryukyu hip-hop music, album (B-LUNCH 沖縄HIPHOP MIX CD) mixed by DJ KENTA and released on Lunch Boxxx Records. Pretty interesting stuff.

I’ve been wondering what happened to the original members of DA PUMP after KEN left in 2009. I saw Shinobu’s Okinawan Pop group in Tokyo back in 2009, ISSA recently starred in the “Ryujin Mabuyer” film, and now I know what’s happened to the other two members. KEN and YUKINARI formed an all-Okinawan hip-hop trio (along with dancer/vocalist AI) called Ryu-Unit (流-UNIT) in 2010 and have released a handful of singles with one of them, “LIKE THAT”, available on the US iTunes Store (link). I’m hoping they’ll incorporate Okinawan music into their style of hip-hop (Oki-hop? LOL) but for now I’m just glad that they’re still performing. They have a YouTube channel so be sure to check out their videos and let me know what you think.

Reblogged from WordPress.com News:

It wasn’t just a one-time event! The Automattic Worldwide WP 5k is back again in 2012! Set your timers for April 29th!

At Automattic we work from all over the world, and we use internal blogs for socializing and exchanging non-work ideas in addition to making WordPress.com and our other products more awesome. One of the things we’re really concerned about is…

Read more… 530 more words

Gotta do this again!

Reblogged from Grits and Sushi:

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Last week I attended the International Symposium on Okinawan Studies that was held at Waseda University in Tokyo.  It was the first time for me to attend a conference solely on Okinawa and it was great to connect with so many scholars I’ve followed for a while, meet up with old friends who are paving their own way with their innovative scholarship, and to network with scholars whose works I had never read.  

Read more… 1,301 more words

Here’s an excerpt:

The concert hall at the Sydney Opera House holds 2,700 people. This blog was viewed about 36,000 times in 2011. If it were a concert at Sydney Opera House, it would take about 13 sold-out performances for that many people to see it.

Click here to see the complete report.

A smile. Whenever I pick up Lee Tonouchi’s Oriental Faddah and Son, I can’t help but smile. The book’s cover is nicely designed and at 152 pages, it should be a fast read (compared to the 925 pages in Haruki Murakami’s 1Q84 which I’m also reading) but in reality, it’s not because I often find myself rereading passages like “Why I Hate Teachers Who Nevah Seen Star Wars,” the content of which is both funny and rather sad.

From the Bess Press website:

Oriental Faddah and Son delivers “Da Pidgin Guerrilla’s” most entertaining yet poignant work to date through a combination of lamenting and humorous poems. As you read, you will journey with author Lee A. Tonouchi through childhood and adolescence into adulthood. You will laugh out loud, sometimes cry, and maybe even discover things about yourself along the way. Award winning author Tonouchi delivers a captivating, semi-autobiographical tale through his mastery of the Pidgin language. Tonouchi intricately weaves life’s most basic human elements—love and loss, birth and death—with uncovering the identity of one’s true self. In the “Guerrilla’s” case, it’s the essence of being an Okinawan in Hawaiʻi.

Now is the perfect time to pick up your copy as the Bess Press website has a holiday sale for 40% off (till 12/30/2011) so grab it now!

The Awamori Fest event is held annually to raise funds for our Okinawan Dance School, Tamagusuku Ryu Senjukai Frances Nakachi Ryubu Dojo. The proceeds from the event will help fund for our future recitals, purchasing costumes and most of all, to provide scholarships for students who are interested in furthering their skills by taking the certification test in Okinawa.

The Awamori Fest will take place on Thursday, 1 December 2011, at the Rumours nightclub in the Ala Moana Hotel, from 6pm to 8pm. The event will feature Okinawan music and dance, a silent auction, activities, and, of course, awamori! Check out the Awamori Fest flyer (Word file) which has more information on purchasing tickets for the event.